


Rebuilding

by imaginary_golux



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Fluff, HP: EWE, M/M, Oblivious Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 09:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13701894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: The war is over, but Hogwarts is a mess. Harry and the DA are rebuilding...with some unexpected help.Beta by my Best of all Beloveds, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.





	Rebuilding

“Did you hear?” Ron asks as they levitate the last chunk of wall back into place. “Malfoy’s back in town.”

Harry blinks in surprise even as he flicks his wand to seal the stone in place, the spell rolling easily off his wand, wordless after so much practice. “The whole family?”

“No, just the Ferret,” Ron says, Summoning the broom at the end of the corridor and beginning to sweep up the dust. They’ve learned by painful experience that too much magic in these still-healing halls can cause what Hermione calls chain reactions and the rest of them call disasters, so they restrict themselves to the spells which actually mend the building and first-year level charms. It means Harry’s much in demand, actually, as one of the few people in the castle who knows how to make food the Muggle way, or mend clothing, or sometimes even _clean_. He finds it mildly ironic, when he has time to think about it, that the most useful thing he’s bringing to the rebuilding of Hogwarts is his _Muggle_ knowledge.

“Huh,” Harry says, and mostly forgets about it - the days when Malfoy was the biggest worry he had are _long_ gone - until three days later, when he comes back to the tent-dormitories they’ve set up to find Malfoy talking quietly with Hermione. He goes over to see if she needs backup, of course.

“...not the _best_ with mending charms, but I’ve gotten very good at wards,” Malfoy is saying. “We...well, we had to re-ward the whole Manor, for obvious reasons. So.”

Hermione nods, scanning the parchment on which she has pretty much _everything_ recorded these days. She’s McGonagall’s right hand, and Harry has a sneaking suspicion she’s going to end up as Deputy Headmistress sooner rather than later.

“Alright,” she says at last, and looks up at Harry. “Harry, you’ve mostly finished on the stonework, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harry says. Malfoy is giving him a perfectly bland look without any challenge in it at all. It’s _unnatural_.

“Then I’m putting you and Malfoy on the wards teams with Luna,” she says. “Mostly because, frankly, Malfoy, Harry and Luna are the only people I’m reasonably sure won’t hex you on sight.”

“That’s fair,” Malfoy says.

“Why are you sure I won’t?” Harry asks.

“Because you know how important this is,” Hermione says, turning back to her scroll, and Harry shrugs at Malfoy.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “You staying in the tents or Apparating over every day, Malfoy?”

“I would prefer to stay here,” Malfoy says. “The Manor is...not comfortable.”

Harry shrugs. “C’mon, then, there’s a Slytherin House tent, and I’ll show you the dining tent. Oh - no magic above first-year stuff except for actual building spells and wards, yeah? Otherwise...bad things happen.”

“I see,” Malfoy says, but he falls in beside Harry calmly enough. Behind them, Harry hears Ron exclaiming, “Wait, was that the _Ferret?_ ” and Hermione’s sigh.

*

Harry mostly doesn’t talk to Malfoy for the first few days of work on the wards, apart from simple things like “mind that loose stone” and “turn left here” and “shite, it’s past midnight.” Luna chatters enough for all three of them, and Harry and Malfoy appear to have come to a silent consensus that they’ll let her carry the conversation, such as it is. Malfoy _is_ good with wards, and Harry has the raw power of the Elder Wand, having decided that putting the wards back up at Hogwarts is a damn good reason to use the thing, and Luna provides a buffer and some really interesting ideas.

Technically, this should probably be done by adults, but Harry’s used to doing things that the adults around him really ought to be handling, and frankly he wouldn’t trust the Ministry to re-ward an _outhouse_ , even with Shacklebolt as Minister. With Hermione coordinating and the entirety of Dumbledore’s Army helping, plus a fair assortment of the surviving Order of the Phoenix and a decent handful of people who weren’t part of either group but have a sincere interest in putting the school back together, like - to pick an example purely at random - Malfoy, they’re making decent headway.

It’s their fourth day working together, and they’re putting up a ward that ought to prevent anything saturated in Dark magic from crossing the boundary-lines - like, for instance, Riddle’s diary, or the diadem-Horcrux, or the Blood Quill - when Malfoy says, quietly, “How do you want to handle _people_ saturated in Dark magic, Potter?”

Harry blinks at him, and Malfoy rolls up his left sleeve, baring the Mark. All three of them stare at it for a while. Harry thinks hard.

“On the one hand,” he says at last, slowly, “Snape had one, and he was on our side. On the other hand, having a ward against the Mark might’ve kept Barty Crouch Junior from being able to sneak in as Moody. _You’ve_ got one, and I don’t think you’re a danger to the school; but if any of the Death Eaters get out of Azkaban, it would be nice to know they can’t get in.” He frowns.

“Do you intend to hurt anyone in the school?” Luna asks dreamily.

“No, of course not,” Malfoy says. “Do I look stupid?” The words are harsh but his tone is not - Harry’s not sure what changed between them that Malfoy speaks so kindly to Luna, but _something_ did.

“Well then,” Luna says, as though she has just solved the problem. Malfoy and Harry blink at each other.

“A wand oath,” Malfoy says finally. “Not an Unbreakable - not for something like this - but a wand oath that the person means no harm to any student or teacher in Hogwarts.”

“Or elf,” Harry says, knowing Hermione will give him a _very_ disappointed look if he forgets that. “Or - um - staff member.”

“Any student, teacher, or other rightful inhabitant of the school,” Malfoy says after a moment’s thought. “That should cover groundskeeper and custodian and ghosts and elves, too.”

“We should run that past Hermione and McGonagall before we put it in,” Harry says, “but that sounds fine to me.”

Malfoy nods and rolls his sleeve down again. “Alright,” he says.

*

Somehow, that moment breaks the wary silence between them, and over the following days Malfoy begins to talk more, making sly jokes that leave Luna convulsed with giggles, or sniping at the long-gone original warders for things they forgot to include. Harry has to admit, if only to himself, that Malfoy is _funny_ when he’s not being a complete arse. He’s also almost as much of a bookworm as Hermione, and he and Luna have long conversations or possibly arguments - Harry’s not entirely sure - about the wording of their spells, devolving into Latin or Greek or occasionally Sanskrit. Harry just goes where he’s told and casts what he’s given, putting the full power of the Elder Wand into the wards which will make Hogwarts once again the safest place in Great Britain.

They put up wards against unsanctioned Animagi and people under Polyjuice, wards to detect the use of any of the Unforgivables and wards to prevent Dark artifacts from being brought onto the grounds, wards to prevent pregnancy and wards to alert the Head of the School to students in danger. Harry wards the Lake against drowning; Malfoy sets wards around the Quidditch Pitch to catch falling students; and Luna insists on a fireproofing ward strong enough to stop Fiendfyre set around the library.

There are other warding teams, and every night they get together and talk through what they’ve done and what they want to do. Hogwarts may have been warded originally by four of the best and brightest witches and wizards in the world, but now it’s got four _dozen_ people debating whether to ward against all Dark magic or only some, all possible hazards or only those most likely. Somewhat to his own surprise, Harry finds himself agreeing with Malfoy about things like “Dark doesn’t necessarily mean evil” and “Slytherins aren’t automatically suspect.” The day Harry finds himself on his feet, glaring at a Gryffindor graduate eight years his senior and declaring, “The man who made it possible to win this whole damned war was a Slytherin, and the one who resurrected Voldemort was a Gryffindor, so _shut your trap_ ,” and sits down to see Malfoy giving him a look of - of something that seems uncomfortably like _awe_ \- Harry leaves the meeting as soon as it’s over and drags Hermione off to a secluded corner for advice.

“Tell me being friends with Malfoy is a bad idea,” he begs. Hermione giggles.

“Actually I think it’s quite a good idea,” she says. “If the quintessential Gryffindor can be friends with the Prince of Slytherin, maybe all the rest of us can get along.”

“Augh,” Harry says, and retreats to the greenhouses, where Neville and Professor Sprout are still working long into the summer evening, putting the battered plants to rights. Unfortunately - or maybe fortunately, Harry’s not sure - Millicent Bulstrode is also there, looking much less intimidating with her arms full of greenery.

“Here,” Neville says, and hands Harry a watering can, and Harry surrenders to the inevitable and spends an hour watering anything that stands still long enough, and wondering if being friends with _Malfoy_ is really that disastrous. He’s willing to accept _Snape_ as a hero, after all, and Snape was, frankly, a much more effectively evil person than Malfoy ever was. And now Malfoy is here, braving the sneers and the snipes and the suspicious looks, to put Hogwarts back together, safer and stronger, so hopefully no more children will be in the same sort of danger _they_ were.

And then he rinses his hands and goes looking for Malfoy, who turns out to be sitting by the lake, flinging a stick far out across the water for the Giant Squid to catch and bring back. It’s ridiculously adorable.

“Hex me, sit down, or leave,” Malfoy says after a few minutes. He hasn’t looked up; Harry wonders how good his _personal_ wards must be. He sits down, too, leaving a little space between them on the wide flat boulder. Malfoy flings the stick again and then turns to look at Harry curiously.

Harry holds out his hand. “Eight years ago I said I could see who the right sort were for myself,” he says quietly. “And y’know, I think I _would_ like to be your friend.”

Malfoy gives him a long, unreadable look, and takes his hand. “Thanks, Potter,” he says, just as softly. “But.”

“But?” Harry asks.

“Potter, I don’t precisely want to be _friends_ with you,” Malfoy says, and Harry flinches and tries to pull his hand away. “No, wait, I’m sorry, that came out wrong.”

Harry pauses mostly because hearing Malfoy _apologize_ is so startling. “What _did_ you mean, then?” he asks warily.

“Merlin, Luna wasn’t joking about how dense you can be,” Malfoy sighs, and leans forward over their clasped hands and kisses him. It’s brief and chaste and dry and _entirely_ startling.

Harry sits there blinking at Malfoy for a long moment. Malfoy gives him a sardonic look, and sighs. “And now you hex me,” he says, letting go of Harry’s hand. “Or punch me, I suppose, if you want to keep from destabilizing the wards.”

Harry thinks about Malfoy’s sly humor, and his awkward kindness towards Luna, and the courage it takes to walk back into a place full of people who despise you just because it’s the right thing to do, and the way Malfoy would have accepted it if Harry and Luna had decided his Mark meant he could never step onto Hogwarts grounds again - about the unexpectedly endearing way his hair fluffs up if he forgets to spell it smooth and his badly-hidden love for coffee and the way he can keep up with Hermione when she’s off on one of her rants - about the fact that Malfoy has been a prat about as long as Harry has known him, and came back from his year elsewhere as the sort of person Harry likes to spend time with.

“I have no idea if this is going to work,” Harry says at last, meeting Malfoy’s eyes and offering a tiny, crooked smile. “But you should probably kiss me again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day 15 of the February Ficlet Challenge.
> 
> I am imaginarygolux on tumblr.


End file.
